Self-Referencing in the Music of Alfred Schnittke : A Case Study in the Context of the 20th Century

Abstract

A large volume of Alfred Schnittke’s musical output is filled with strategies that reference a style, an era, or other existing pieces of music. To achieve this referential quality, he incorporated allusions and direct quotations. One rather unusual source of his quotations was his own other compositions, namely his film music. While quoting his film music in his concert music however, his compositional process went further than merely creating “collage” works, instead it was a matter of interconnecting them with the main materials of the composition and even building whole movements and pieces based on them.

This research aims to delve into Schnittke’s self-referencing of his film music in the contexts of both 20th century western classical music, and his own compositional life and processes. This will be done by using Concerto Grosso No.1 as a quite comprehensive case study of this phenomenon, and contextualizing it by examining 20th century quotation and self-quotation trends, his relationship with the Soviet regime, his viewpoint on “art” and “entertainment” music (film and concert music in this case), the intertextual significance and associations of the references, and the recontextualization of the materials leading him closer to the “universal musical language” he was after. This will help with synthesizing a concise but rather multi-faceted narrative regarding Schnittke’s self-referencing approach, an aspect of his compositions that is more often than not neglected.